oneazn2nv's Full Review: ATI RADEON® 9800 XT, (256 MB) AGP Video Card
Intro:
When I heard about Half Life 2 and Everquest 2 coming out for PC, I knew it was time to shop for a new graphics card. I own 2 radeon 8500 64meg cards and have been very happy with their performance in both of my computers. However, now that these new games are coming out, there is a need to upgrade to a new card to adequately handle the new shading.
The Search:
I immediately went to www.ati.com to see what the latest and greatest was. I read that the latest was the radeon 9800 pro 128megs video card. And I also read that the Radeon 9800xt 256 was scheduled to release in November 2003. It was around September, and Everquest 2 wasn't scheduled for release until summer 2004, so I recognized I had a lot of time to research and see if ATI had again outdone the NVIDIA competition, or if it had just added more memory to it's motherboard...
The Features:: (taken from ati.com)
begin quote-from ati.com
Eight parallel rendering pipelines
Four parallel geometry engines
256-bit DDR memory interface
AGP 8X support
SMARTSHADER™ 2.1
Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware
2.0 Vertex Shaders support vertex programs up to 65,280 instructions with flow control
2.0 Pixel Shaders support up to 16 textures per rendering pass
New F-buffer technology supports pixel shader programs with unlimited instructions
128-bit, 64-bit & 32-bit per pixel floating point color formats
Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
Shadow volume rendering acceleration
Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® via extensions
SMOOTHVISION™ 2.1
2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options
HYPER Z™ III
3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test
Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)
Fast Z-Buffer Clear
Z cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering
TRUFORM™ 2.0
2nd generation N-Patch higher order surface support
Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per polygon
Displacement mapping
VIDEOSHADER™
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video
FULLSTREAM™ video de-blocking technology
Noise removal filtering for captured video
MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color space conversion
All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
YPrPb component output*
Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
Dual integrated display controllers
Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant and HDCP ready)
Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
System Requirements:
RADEON™ 9800 Series of products requires connection to your PC's internal power supply for operation. Consult your system builder or OEM to ensure your system has an adequate power supply. Otherwise, ATI recommends a 300-Watt power supply or greater to ensure normal system operation where a number of other internal devices are installed.
Intel® Pentium® 4, AMD® Athlon® or higher with AGP 8X (0.8v), 4X (1.5V) or Universal AGP 3.0 bus configuration (8X/4X)
128MB of system memory
Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
DVD playback requires DVD drive
Operating Systems Support :
Windows ME
Windows 2000
Windows XP
End quote
The overdrive operation
The overdrive is one of the best features of the XT. It allows you to dynamically overclock your XT giving it another boost of power. This feature is enabled using a Catalyst 3.8 driver (found on ATI.com) or higher revision of that driver. I personally haven't used this feature yet, but I will attempt to in the near future, and of course I'll update this review with the information.
3D Mark Results
Sharky extreme has a great article on the Radeon 9800 XT's performance in comparison to the XFX GeForce FX 5900 and the previous 9800 Pro vid cards. You can see the reviews on this link:
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/videocards/article.php/3211_3110611__5
Basically the Radeon 9800XT 256 card "spanks" the competition and the OD function gives the XT a noticeable boost. I was recently told by a friend that ATI is also coming out with some new drivers for the XT to make it even faster! I can't wait till it comes out.
It seems to me that the Geforce FX 5900 is pretty close to the XT's performance UNTIL you start doing shading anti-aliasing, then the big difference is noticed and the XT spanks the FX.
I did my own test on with 3dmark and I'm not sure how it compares with everything else but...
My system
Amd xp 1800 (1.53Ghz processor)
ECS K7S5A
756 megs of PC2100 ram.
3d mark Result:
My score was 5959 I'm not sure what it means or how it compares to other scores, but if you know... there it is =P
Installation
The installation of this card is a bit more than plug and play. You need to read the instructions BEFORE you put the card in. I hate doing this, but it is necessary. I had to learn the hard way.
DO THIS FIRST(quote from the user manual)
Begin Quote
Install AGP Drivers for Non-Intel Chipset Based Motherboards. Several AGP motherboard manufacturers use non-Intel AGP chipsets. Chipsets include those made by Acer Laboratories(ALI, Silicon Integrated Systems(SIS), and VIA Technologies, Inc. Each Non-Intel chipset requires the installation of a custome Virtual GART (AGP) Driver. This driver is required by your new ATI card to function correctly with your motherboard. It is very important that the correct AGP driver be installed before installing an AGP video card in your system.
End Quote
The XT also requires you provide it with power, it comes with a cable that you can plug into your power supply, this powers the video card and it's fan, it's required, so this is very important.
PRICE
I got my XT for $499 plus tax at Fry's Electronics whereas the Geforce FX 5900 costs around $250-$300. When purchasing Computer hardware I always recommend buying it from an actual store and not online. Buying Computer components online is more difficult because you may have to return your item. I found that Fry's had 2 faulty Radeon XT's before I actually got a working one. I should have known, and I do hate Fry's the evil corporation... BUT the first two I bought had these stickers on them; markdowns from $499 to $449. I found out why. The boards were returned! So I demanded they give me one that was new and un-opened. They complied and it worked.
Packaging and extras
The XT comes with a DVI converter (DVI to CRT) so you can use 2 CRT monitors (CRT are those heafty ones, the DVI's are the LCD ones) It also comes with a voucher for Half Life 2. Half life 2 is not out yet, but when it does come out, you can use your voucher to get a free Half Life 2 as a promotion.
*UPDATE 02-02-2004*
I've played Halo on the computer with this video card. The Anti aliasing is just amazing on this video card. I played Halo with all the settings at Maximum. There were times where it said "LOADING" but that's just part of the game. Otherwise, there were no skips, the frame rate didn't drop at all... clearly a super vid card.
I've played Halo on the X box, I've beaten the X box version on Legendary with my friend about a year and a half ago. If you remember the invisible covanent guys in the x box version, they're really difficult to see on a TV. But on the computer with the XT they are as clear as day. The graphics were definately better on the computer version than the x box version. There were times when I played Halo on the x box version where the frame rate dropped. But on the computer there was no problem at all. Excellent vid card ATI!
Rating time
Design: 10/10
Features: 10/10
Performance: 10/10
Price: 8/10
Noise: 8/10
Ease of Use: 8/10
Durability: N/A
Total: 54/60
-So overall I'm pretty impressed with this card. This is not the last time you'll hear from me about this card either. I Will update in the near future when I learn new and exciting things this card has to offer.
If you have any questions, leave a comment, I'll be glad to answer them for you.
-EQ 2 is everquest on crack. I can only hope...
*Update* 07/07/2005
World of Warcraft: I've played for about 3 weeks now on World of Warcraft with this video card. It handles really well. I haven't had any problems. No skips and the only lag I get is from my internet connection.
Everquest 2: I've played EQ 2 with this video card as well. Absolutely superb.
Doom 3: Doom 3 with all the settings at max, there are some skips now and then, but mostly it's pretty solid. The lighting is really well taken care of.
Half Life 2: Although I'm not so impressed with the game, the graphics and lighting are done really nicely. I think I like the Doom 3 graphics and lighting better though.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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